RYAN WHITE
The Oregonian Staff

What is there to say about nostalgia that Lou Reed hasn't already said? It's a hard thing to like -- unless it's yours. And so it should be a questionable proposition, this Van Halen tour that arrives at the Rose Garden arena Saturday night.

Roth is for-real back in the band for the first time in 22 years, and they aren't playing a single song that isn't at least seven years older than the new bass player, Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's 16-year-old son. It has been three years since the band released new music of any kind (three songs with Hagar on a best-of). It's been 11 years since the last new tunes with Roth (two songs on a best-of). Eddie was last heard scoring a porn flick shortly before checking into rehab. Roth has been both a New York City paramedic and Howard Stern's doomed replacement on the radio.

What then to say about three guys and a kid who get together to play songs they haven't played in more than two decades and don't add a lick of new licks? Remember when?

When every teacher was hot? When every prom queen was the next Jenna Jameson? When you were headed for a whole lot of trouble if you took your whiskey home? When you could dance the night away, but if all else failed, well, you might as well jump? Those were the days. There was a hot tub in every backyard and a cheerleader in every hot tub and we ain't talkin' 'bout love, man. Life was a huge stack of amps ripped to 11 and it was fun -- even if it was Van Halen's life, not ours.

From that moment in 1978, on the band's self-titled debut album, when Eddie tore into his signature solo, "Eruption," and jolted rock out of the 1970s . . . until 1985, when Roth split to do cheesy cover tunes, Van Halen created a landscape. Having themselves emerged from the party scene of the Los Angeles suburbs, in six albums with Roth, Van Halen gave suburban American kids a Big Rock Candy Mountain to call their own. Everyone was invited to the party and everyone was expected to dance.

Then that Van Halen had to die. It did. Roth had to go. If you don't believe that, look at his solo work, and think about what the ensuing Van Halen records would have sounded like after that combustible relationship settled into settling, and how they would have eventually ended up with Elton John's job substitute teaching for Celine Dion at Caesar's Palace.

Roth left and Hagar came in and the band moved from not talking about love (wink-wink) to wondering why this can't be love, singing about when it's love. The party continued but with just a little more heart. If David Lee Roth was Van Halen's teenage id, then Sammy Hagar was the band's, oh, slightly more mature 20s id. Then in 1996, down went Hagar after an argument with Eddie who, if we're going to keep casting the group's psyche, has played id, ego and super-ego.

Gary Cherone, formerly of Extreme, joined later in 1996. Far more ego than id, he was perfectly happy to sing Hagar songs and Roth songs. He seemed to be, and by all accounts was, happy to be there at all. They put out one album, did a tour, and that was that. Van Halen entered that period of wandering familiar to anyone approaching his 30s.

The brothers Van Halen -- Eddie and Alex -- went through health problems and substance abuse problems and marriage problems. Bassist Michael Anthony began spending more and more time with Hagar, who was himself busy branding himself as Tropical Hard Rock Party Guy, complete with a club in Cabo and a brand of tequila named after it.

In 2004 Hagar rejoined the group long enough to hit the road for a tour that was, by most accounts, a disaster, a result foreshadowed by the three terrible songs they did for a two-disc career retrospective. After the tour Hagar slipped back into Jimmy Buffett mode and Eddie slipped back out of sight, showing up in public rarely, and when he did, he looked like hell.

This was sad. Van Halen had mattered. Every few years a Roth rumor would fire up and I'd get an excited e-mail from a friend with a subject usually along the lines of "The Mighty Van Halen!" I didn't care. I'd moved on. I was older. My life was more complicated. The world was more complicated. I was looking for artists who addressed that. I got deep into Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and a whole host of singer-songwriters and confused poetic romantics. Van Halen became a memory that occupied the back end of my alphabetized CD collection, because someone had to come before Tom Waits and Warren Zevon.

Roth is really back. And Van Halen is really on the road with him, and they are playing really old, kick-butt songs. People are digging it. Critics are digging it. It seems to be working. They're adding dates. No one thought they'd add dates.

It's tempting to look at the reaction and think, We're living in angry times. We're divided in so many ways. No one gets along. Everyone's yelling. We're at war. The economy is teetering. Hollywood's writers are striking. Things are tough all over. Now, more than in a long, long time, we need Van Halen. We need a good time.

To think that, however, might be to ascribe more meaning that this tour deserves. Van Halen is not a band deep in meaning -- unless you count Roth's little stage trick where he manages to make a top hat levitate in front of his crotch.

Maybe you could argue the tour is about redemption and the resiliency of the human spirit. That it's about how no matter the differences, people can come together and work things out. We can get along. Peace. This is about peace.

But I don't buy that either. This tour is about nostalgia, period.

A few weeks ago, I loaded all the Roth-era discs onto my iPod, which I then plugged into my home theater system and turned up to ear-splitting levels. I grinned while my foot tapped. My mind searched and found the lyrics still lodged in there. I found my inner air guitarist.

Lou Reed was right. Nostalgia is a hard thing to like unless it's yours. But Van Halen's been around for nearly 30 years, serving part of that time as the nation's biggest, loudest, fastest rock 'n' roll band. Somewhere along the line, Van Halen's nostalgia became our nostalgia, too. That's why this works.

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